The campaign’s objectives were ambitious. The Police wanted to recruit 600 new officers, increase the diversity of the workforce, reduce recruitment costs, and build engagement and a positive perception of a Police career among target groups.
Despite the ambitious nature of the campaign, the Police report that it has been successful. The target of 600 extra recruits has been met and the cost to attract each recruit was 29% lower than it was from 2008 to 2010.
The Police say that it has had successful engagement with target groups through its recruitment page on Facebook. As at April 2013, the recruitment page on Facebook remained the third most “liked” official page in the state service, with almost 17,000 “likes”. The Twitter account for the work stories, @BetterWorkStory, has about 4000 followers.
The two stages of the recruitment campaign were to get potential recruits to participate in an online seminar and then to recruit them into the Police. The graph below shows that:
compared with the Police as a whole, a larger proportion of females took the online seminar and were then recruited into the Police; and
compared with the New Zealand population, a higher proportion of young people took the online seminar and were recruited into the Police.